Oh yay, another driver issue.

[pentium]

The system was running perfectly up until an hour ago when I decided to update the freaking Realtek gigabit LAN driver. After that the system wouldn't connect. Period.
The network cable is plugged in and both the lights on the system and on the switch downstairs say it is connected (the cable is also good) and even XP itself acknowledges when the network cable is plugged in or unplugged but I can't see or ping any other computers let alone connect to the internet and every other system in the house can't see or ping it as well.
It's like.....it's connected....but it's not.
I of course rolled back the driver to the driver I was initially using and that worked and still nothing, I even forcefully reinstalled the old driver and I'm still getting nothing. Yes I have been rebooting between reinstallations of the driver but I don't get it and this system has no more room in it for me to install another network card and carry on from there.
Anyone got an idea on what has happened?

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Stupid time limit...
I also forgot to add that I ran the diagnostic utility for the onboard NIC which tests for register access, EEPROM access, loopback as well as link and reloads the driver and it passed the diagnostics with no issues.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Did you completely uninstall the driver in Windows, reboot into the BIOS, disable the onboard NIC, boot into Windows with the NIC disabled, then reboot into the BIOS, enable the NIC, then boot into Windows and let it detect and install the NIC on its own?

[momaka]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Not sure if this will help, but after you install drivers, go in CMD and type the following commands:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

If you still can't connect to the Internet after that, type in "ipconfig" only and see if your ISP appears there.

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Did you completely uninstall the driver in Windows, reboot into the BIOS, disable the onboard NIC, boot into Windows with the NIC disabled, then reboot into the BIOS, enable the NIC, then boot into Windows and let it detect and install the NIC on its own?

This alone confirms that something in XP is acting up.
I did what you said to the line and now while the Device Manager sees the adapter but When I check the network connections, it sees my firewire card (expected for a Windows XP system with a firewire card to see it also as a network device) but I don't see the network card.
Okay, now what?
We went from "system was not connected when it was" to "system sees no network card when it knows it is there".

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Oh, and with another reboot the system sees it again in both places.
Also, releasing and renewing my IP is kinda useless when you use a static IP. All my systems run static and yes, I already tried DHCP and it gave me "limited or no connectivity" which equates to nothing different.

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Plot thickens.
I connected a wireless USB adapter, connected to the router, got online long enough for Skype and Steam to login and then it died again.

Oh, one other thing I noticed (it may or may not be related) is that in the task manager there is an unstoppable process called system that was initially started by the system that's running at a load ranging between 35 and 40%.
This in turn is pushing my system idle up to between 38 and 45% which is normally between 2 and 5%.
I doubt it means much but I guess it's still worth mentioning.

[ratdude747]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

MALWARE! find another virus scanner and scan that thing.

[momaka]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

I doubt it's malware.

I've had that problem once too (connection found but no internet). Had to reinstall the network adapter a few times. Not sure what exactly happened back then.

Pentium: System Idle should be at or close to 99% CPU usage when system is idle. Try Process Explorer and see what's taking your resources. I doubt that this is causing the problem too, but it's good to check I guess.

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

System Idle should be at or close to 99% CPU usage when system is idle. Try Process Explorer and see what's taking your resources. I doubt that this is causing the problem too, but it's good to check I guess.

I already know what's using the additional resources and I already mentioned it....

Oh, one other thing I noticed (it may or may not be related) is that in the task manager there is an unstoppable process called system that was initially started by the system that's running at a load ranging between 35 and 40%.
This in turn is pushing my system idle up to between 38 and 45% which is normally between 2 and 5%.
I doubt it means much but I guess it's still worth mentioning.

the process "system" is not the "system idle process" you are thinking of. Look at the attached picture.

Still, I doubt that there was malware attached to a driver that came directly from MSI's FTP server and doubt that any inactive malware became active with a driver update.

Still, this is one stubborn issue. So far I have reset the Tcp/IP stack as well as Winsock which normally nukes any serious problems and this still persists.

[momaka]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

I already know what's using the additional resources and I already mentioned it....
the process "system" is not the "system idle process" you are thinking of.

I know. But you should try something other than Task Manager to see what exactly is taking up the resources. System is a parent process for a number of other processes too, hence CPU usage from them will appear under System as well.

And 78 processes? This is madness!

By the way, I just remembered how I fixed my issue back them. After unsuccessfully uninstallig and reinstalling my network card a few times, I uninstalled the network card again, then I shut off everything (computer, router, and modem). Started up everything one by one and somehow that got it fixed.

[Wizard]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Is this on notebook? Since you have about 4 instances of LCD stuff. What this for?
Isn't the windows screen saver/power management not sufficient for you?

Cheers, Wizard

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

A lot of the LCD stuff is for my Logitech G15 as it has the nice LCD panel on it.

I actually tried cycling all my hardware before you mentioned it but no dice there either.
Anyways, ran Process explorer and...

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Well I got it working by toggling between the four drivers installed in the system but it appears that after a reboot, I have to toggle through them again to get it to work and even then, I still have this additional CPU load I didn't have before and at times I notice it, especially with CPU intensive stuff like Garrys Mod. What do we do about that?

[Wizard]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Start in safe mode with drivers disabled.

Go into the hardware device properties manager and open up the network card and *delete* all. Make sure you have correct driver for it and implicitly point that to it instead of windows automatic pick of wrong day method.

I learned this from my pc tech about decade and half in 95 and 98 days and still applies now.

Cheers, Wizard

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Start in safe mode with drivers disabled.

Go into the hardware device properties manager and open up the network card and *delete* all. Make sure you have correct driver for it and implicitly point that to it instead of windows automatic pick of wrong day method.

I learned this from my pc tech about decade and half in 95 and 98 days and still applies now.

Cheers, Wizard

I unfortunately only have immediate access to the newer driver (Jan 2008). The older driver I don't rememeber where it came from but I can't seem to locate it now.
Also, Are we sure this will fix this? Last thing I want is me crippling the system again and ending up with dead networking again. I would rather not spend the rest of my weekend trying to get this computer working.

[Wizard]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

Find the drivers of few versions first. What's this network card?

Cheers, Wizard

[pentium]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

I already said I can't find the older version of the driver. If you wanna look anyways, Windows sees it as the "Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit NIC"
Speaking of which, I woke and went to my computer this morning and....once again networking is down so I said the hell with it and rebooted and went into safe mode.
It only sees one instance of the network adapter but will not allow me to uninstall it because "this device may be required to boot up the computer".
Okay, if I can't get this going by payday, I'll drag this thing over to the shop and see what they can do. This is really frustrating.

[Wizard]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

This is reasons I install intel chipset based cards in all my machines these days. Available in PCI or PCI-E. Go this route, and your CPU utilization goes down also.

Cheers, Wizard

[370forlife]

Re: Oh yay, another driver issue.

I always use intel or older 3com cards in my computers. Intel's are always really fast and have almost no issues at all. The 3com's are also pretty fast, I just put them in not as important computers. Plug them in and they work. I still have a integrated realtek in my gaming computer, and it is sooooo slow doing file transfers.

My realtek card sometimes:

*plug in the cable*

...
...
Ohh, you want to connect to a network? Hmmm, I don't know, i guess I can. I'll just go get a cup of coffee first. Ok, I'm back now and I guess I can connect to the network. I will just take my sweet ol' time. You know what, I don't want an IP today, I'll just use this other computers and cause a bunch of conflicts.